Part 1: Personal Belief Systems
Reading Belief System Philosophy I am the product of two teachers: one elementary, and one technology. My mother, the elementary teacher, was big on reading when I was going through my youth. During the school year, she wouldn’t push reading that much at home unless it was a weekend or if she knew I had to reach my reading goal in the near future. However, in the summer time, I will always remember her being all in my business about making sure to keep up with my reading. She would say, “I’m setting the timer for 30 minutes, pick a book and get to reading.” I remember always dreading these times. I was never a very strong reader, I had decent comprehension but my focus was lacking at the time, which would cause me to reread the content. When this would happen, I would instantly blame the selection of books that my mom made me choose from, which all happened to be classic novels or your standard children novels. I was always a much better reader when I read aloud, and really enjoyed being read to because I didn’t feel like I was actually reading. My previous reading events have helped shape my views on reading instruction and how the students receive this instruction. My approach towards students during reading is more empathetic than a lot of teachers due to my past experiences, and I believe that this will help me become a better educator and build better relationships with students. The model of reading that I closely align with is the interactive model. According to Vacca (2018, p. 25), “interactive models of reading assume that the process of translating print to meaning involves making use of both prior knowledge and print.” The interactive model is based on the reader making predictions based on the interactions with the text and graphics. Vacca (2018, p. 28), later goes on to say “if readers bring a great deal of knowledge to the material, chances are that their hypothesis will be strong and they will process the material actively.” Interactive models allow teachers and students to go through a read-around-the-text exercise, where they will skim through the text to try and decode vocabulary and graphics to formulate hypotheses on what the text will be about. These predictions help students inspire their creativity throughout the reading process and will allow them to become more effective readers. I have had a couple of different experiences that have helped guide my personal philosophy on reading towards the interactive piece. One of the experiences goes back to my childhood when my mother would force me to read in the summer time to help me become a more effective reader. I truly do believe if I would have sat down with a text that she was somewhat familiar with and she had asked me leading questions as to what I thought was going to happen based on pictures or vocabulary words that I would have been more engaged in the majority of those books. I also had a college professor in a youth literacy class that was centered around children’s books. In this class, the professor had us make predictions about children’s books that we hadn’t read from different parts of the world, and that was really the first time that I had gone through an exercise like that. It was in that moment that I realized the power of making predictions and the power of the interactive model. In my current teaching environment, which is a middle school resource setting, we practice an interactive system. We have students broken up into small reading groups with a teacher or teacher assistant at each group to help facilitate discussion and interactivity. This has been a very effective activity for our class and we will definitely continue to do throughout the school year. Doing this has also allowed us to facilitate more whole-group instruction if we sensed there was a lack of understanding from the students. Whole-group instruction during interactive reading instruction only would be very difficult because as we know, students have all different skill levels when it comes to reading and it is important to give all students a chance to further their development through the small-group process. Reference: Vacca, J. A., Vacca, R. T., Gove, M. K., Burkey, L. C., Lenhart, L. A., & McKeon, C. A. (2018). Reading and learning to read. Retrieved August 28, 2018, from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9780134447728/cfi/52!/4/4@ 0.00:0.00